Sunday, January 22, 2017

I imagine that The New York Times was offering Alyssa Rubin's article about the political situation in France as news analysis. By her lights the old socialist left is about to suffer an abysmal defeat in upcoming
presidential elections. She sees formerly socialist voters gravitating
to the far right, anti-Europe candidate, Marine Le Pen.

Unfortunately, Rubin has distorted the story beyond
recognition. She is offering propaganda, not news analysis.

Several points stand out.

Rubin has nothing to say about France’s Muslim population. She
does not even mention Islam. (As you know, some people believe that we ought to be fighting against Islamphobia, not Islamic terrorism.) French Muslims are more than 10% of the
population. They cause an inordinate amount of trouble. Last summer, one of their
members ran down and murdered dozens of revelers in Nice on Bastille Day. The
nation was horrified and it has tended to hold the Socialist president and his
party accountable. After all, 90% the votes of French Muslims went Socialist.

Rubin says that it’s partly about “anti-immigrant” anger,
but she downplays the importance of immigration and the sense in France that
the French are losing their country. As I said, she says nothing about Islam.

Note how she downplays the threat of immigration. And makes
it appear as though the problem in France is Eastern European immigration.
Obviously, she says nothing about the role that German Chancellor Angela Merkel
played in precipitating the crisis.

Rubin wrote this:

Compounding
the sense of a changing world, even a modest wave of immigration disturbed many
local residents. Beginning about six years ago, a small number of sub-Saharan
Africans arrived in Limoges, soon followed by bigger numbers of Eastern Europeans.

And she added this:

“So,
here in our street, we had principally Bulgarians, afterwards Romanians and
then Albanians,” Mr. Gérard said. “Why? This I know, because Europe no longer
has any borders.”

At the
same time, many affluent people began moving to the suburbs for bigger houses
and left the city center to older people and newcomers, many of whom were
migrants.

Mr.
Rodet, the mayor who was toppled, said that just weeks before the election,
there had been a rumor that an abandoned military base near the center of
Limoges would become a home for “3,000 Kosovars.”

Rubin notes that the story was untrue. She does not mention that most Kosovars are Muslim.

Also, Rubin ignored the center-right candidate who
is most likely going to become France’s next president. She did not mention the name of Francois
Fillon, a Thatcherite conservative who will likely be in a runoff against
Marine Le Pen. And who will no doubt win.

Why does Rubin ignore the most obvious political reality, if
not to set up a dialectic between the left and the far right. It’s called
distorting the news.

Of course, Rubin wants to make the story resemble the
current situation in the United States. So she says that the nation’s labor
unionists are rebelling against globalization.

She does not mention the fact that France has been governed
by statist politicians for decades now. She does not mention that France has a
bloated public sector whose tax and regulatory policies have made it nearly
impossible for French companies to compete in the world market. That is why the
nation is turning toward a Francois Fillon. And she does not mention the
hundreds of thousands of young French men and women who have immigrated to
England, to pursue economic opportunity.

French Socialists have made it extremely difficult to do business
in France. In fairness, the current president, Francois Hollande has been
trying to overturn some of the labor laws that make it impossible to fire
anyone. And the labor unions have been opposing his efforts. About this Rubin
has nothing to say.

If you want to know the party line, Rubin offers it up: it’s
all about income inequality:

Across
Europe, the old Socialist blocs have fractured into smaller parties, partly
because their voting bases have changed but also because rampant inequality and
the decline of the middle class have created fertile ground for more extreme parties.

As you know, the standard socialist solution to income
inequality is more taxes and more regulation. A good journalist would have
enough integrity to present the story, warts and all. Rubin presents what
amounts to a political propaganda piece that distorts reality beyond recognition and leaves Times readers choking on a fairy tale.[One should compare the Times piece with a recent article from the Gatestone Institute. It is entitled The Islamization of France. It suggests that someone is living in an alternate reality.]